US Justice Department and FTC looking into Apple's new subscription policy

Apple unveiled its new app store subscriptions earlier this week with a decent amount of controversy and even an official statement from Rhapsody saying it would not comply with the new regulations. The new policy requires any company offering subscription services to offer the same service, at the same price (or less) through Apple, with Apple skimming 30 percent off the top. It also no longer allows apps to have links to external sites where purchases can be made. Now, reports the Wall Street Journal, antitrust enforcers in the US are having a preliminary look into the new arrangement. So, what does that mean? Well, these kinds of pre-investigations are pretty common, so it could mean nothing at all. Or, it could lead to a more formal investigation into if the policy violates antitrust laws. When asked for comment on the story, unsurprisingly, no one at Apple, the FTC, or the Justice Department would comment.

[Source: Wall Street Journal via Engadget]

IBM Jepardy Challenge: Finale Summary

Ken Jennings was thirsty for blood (silicon?) tonight. After struggling to buzz in faster than Watson during in the first match, Jennings was noticeably quicker in this match, buzzing in first and thinking about the correct response after. As a result, he finished with over 18,200 going into Final Jeopardy, just a few thousand dollars behind Watson's 23,440. Rutter meanwhile, was mostly invisible during this round much like Jennings was last round. But he still managed to rack up 5,600.

As for Watson, it may not have been quite as dominant as last round, but seemed less confused by questions this time around, only providing nonsensical answers a couple of times. But Watson proved it was the best contestant out there. If they played 10 rounds of Jeopardy, I'd be surprised if Watson lost any more than one time.

And you know what was disappointing? The interview segment of the show. Always a source of entertainment for conversations which are nothing short of AWKWARD, Watson never got his time to shine. Alex asked Jennings and Rutter about the charities they were donating half their winnings to, but not Watson. Instead of carrying out an exchange with Alex or rattling off a pre-determined message in is creepily lifeless voice, know what we got? Some WASP-y IBM stiff who was easily 100 (maybe even 101) times less interesting than Watson.

 But whatever. Unlike last night, there was actually a bit of intrigue going into Double Jeopardy. Jennings earned enough in this round that if he put his entire total for the night on the line and guessed correct, he could possibly eek out a victory against Watson. The category was 19th century authors and the clue was this:
Jennings correctly answered Bram Stoker. But his wager?

What Does This Mean?

Watson's victory is a pretty significant moment for machines. But don't get too carried away and start questioning the meaning of life while searching for a leather-clad savior to deliver us from our impending doom. I mean, the thing thinks Toronto is a U.S. city for God's sake.

That said, Watson is proof that we're closer than ever to having machines which interact with us as effortlessly and intuitively as humans do. Its voice recognition skills aren't there yet, and it's roughly the size of 1.5 Steve Ballmers (pretty big!), but we shouldn't be discouraged. Think about the computers that were around 60 years ago—or even 30 years ago—that took up entire rooms and what they were capable of. Now, most of our smartphones are more powerful (or nearly more powerful) than that.

So in many of our lifetimes, it's likely that we'll get to experience machines more powerful than Watson, which will fit into our hands, or be integrated into our homes, cars, hospitals, androids, etc. We talk. It listens and replies. It might even be smarter than us, as IBM suggests.

This, people, is an exciting possibility.

[Source: Gizmodo]

Microsoft Rally Ball demo shows Windows Phone 7, Kinect, Xbox Live living in perfect harmony

Though it's billed strictly as a technology demo -- not something we'll necessarily see in any imminent over-the-air update -- Microsoft showed off a pretty cool demo of how Windows Phone 7's Xbox Live integration could take advantage of Kinect down the road at Steve Ballmer's MWC keynote today. How, you ask? Using the Rally Ball game, a Windows Phone user was shown tossing balls to an on-screen character that's controlled by someone else on an Xbox using a Kinect. Simple, yes -- but perhaps as interesting as the Kinect aspect is the viability of real-time cross-platform gaming that Microsoft seems to be throwing its support behind.




[Source: Engadget]

IBM's Mira supercomputer does ten petaflops with ease, inches us closer to exascale-class computing

Say hello to the Blue Gene/Q, or if you're looking for something a bit less intimidating, "Mira." That's IBM's latest and greatest concoction, a ten-petaflop supercomputer capable of running programs at ten quadrillion calculations a second. Hard to say who'd win between Mira and Watson, of course, but there's absolutely no question who'd come out on top if Mira were pitted against her predecessor Intrepid (hint: Mira's 20x faster). To put this all in perspective, IBM's chiming in with this:

"If every man, woman and child in the United States performed one calculation each second, it would take them almost a year to do as many calculations as Mira will do in one second."

Mira's next stop is at the US Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, where it'll be used to tackle 16 projects in particular that were drawn from a pool of proposals to gain access to her capabilities. We're told that these include a range of initiatives -- from reducing energy inefficiencies in transportation and developing advanced engine designs to spurring advances in energy technologies -- and in time, it could lead to exascale-class computers "that will be faster than petascale-class computers by a factor of a thousand."

[Source: IBM via Engadget]

Robots TiaLinx's Cougar20-H surveillance robot can peer through walls, see you breathe

You may be able to outrun it, but you probably won't be able to hide from TiaLinx's new Cougar20-H surveillance robot. While it might not look like much, the bot packs an impressive RF array that's not only able to detect movement within a building (though concrete walls, no less), but is even able to detect a person breathing inside a building at "long standoff distances." Perhaps not surprisingly, complete details are largely being kept under wraps (the bot was developed with some help from the U.S. Army), but this isn't simply a prototype -- it'll be rolling out next month and is expected to be put to use byvarious law enforcement and government agencies.

[Source: CNET via Engadget]